Why materialists are predominantly materialists

[Angrboda]

Anyway, I don't view consciousness as a thing which requires a certain amount to "turn on."  Rather, a companion set of neural circuits evolved on top of our neural circuits controlling body behavior and perception in order to tie our behavioral responses to our perceptions.  This likely occurred very early on in the evolution of highly mobile animals, and is largely an all or nothing process.  In a fish, it would be used to make behavioral decisions based on perception of the environment.  My suspicion is that an animal like a black fly doesn't have this extra layer of decision making apparatus, and has more or less pre-programmed responses to light, shadow, smell, and sound in its environment.  That a fly has an algorithm, whereas a fish has true consciousness.  But I could be wrong.  Perhaps a fly has consciousness, too.

Would you agree with Rhythm, then, that a non-organic system (say a computer) which can do this kind of complex coordination, is conscious?

I believe consciousness is a very specific computation which requires specific structural elements to be present for it to work. A computer would have to duplicate that structure to be conscious. A typical computer doesn't have the necessary computations in place to be conscious.

On another note, it seems likely to me that any organism which is capable of motivated behavior (in other words, 100% of living things), have a kind of consciousness.  They have some built-in sense of how the world should be for them, and a strong motivation to bring themselves to that state.  I think (again, I can't claim to know), that when you try to swat a fly, it knows it doesn't want to be swatted, and takes a very deliberate evasive action.

It's a matter of degree, not kind, I think. Consciousness is an algorithm but not all algorithms are consciousness. A fly would have an algorithm for responding to events in its environment, but it wouldn't necessarily be the algorithm type that is consciousness. From my observation of flies, their behavior seems rather automatic, but perhaps.

[bennyboy]

I can see how a certain algorithm would BEHAVE as a conscious agent. What I can't see is how it would BECOME a conscious agent.

[The Grand Nudger]

Are you sure that there's a difference? You'd need to be for that question to have any merit or value. In any case, that you can't see it is hardly indicative, wouldn't you agree?

I can't imagine how carbon fiber is produced, and yet it is. You can't see how a collection of matter running algorithms could be conscious.......

[Neo-Scholastic]

I can see how a certain algorithm would BEHAVE as a conscious agent.  What I can't see is how it would BECOME a conscious agent.

I think Jor is saying that they don't actually become conscious agents.They think they think but they don't. They don't actually feel the feelings they feel. She turns Chalmers's thought problem on its head by saying that ours already is the zombie world.

[The Grand Nudger]

I don;t think that by describing consciousness in a way that you would not or do not agree with, we are made to be zombies.  We are still what we are, however it's arrived upon.

[I_am_not_mafia]

I can see how a certain algorithm would BEHAVE as a conscious agent.  What I can't see is how it would BECOME a conscious agent.

Why not?

If you have an action selection algorithm that responds to inputs and produces certain outputs, then what about if the input was based on the internal state of the agent controller? Why isn't that a form of consciousness?

Consciousness isn't a binary state of something that you have or don't have. Even with humans, some people are more conscious of why they act the way they do than others. It's why some people go to therapy for example, to understand why they are acting the way they do.

Obviously we risk falling into the trap here of arguing over the definition of consciousness and equivocating over its meaning. But from my perspective as someone who creates strong artificial intelligence, I cannot personally find a better or more useful definition of consciousness than being able to sense and adapt to ones own internal state and observations of ones own actions.

You may have a different idea of what consciousness is. But if so then you need to define it if you are going to say that an algorithm couldn't be conscious. And then you'll need to argue that your definition of consciousness cannot be computed.

[The Grand Nudger]

That last bit would be the hardest sell.  Something that cannot be computed (cannot, mind you, not "isn't currently possible with a desktop pc") is, by definition, something that cannot be described mathematically or logically. Anything that -can- be described mathematically or logically is subject to computation in principle.

[Angrboda]

I can see how a certain algorithm would BEHAVE as a conscious agent.  What I can't see is how it would BECOME a conscious agent.

I think Jor is saying that they don't actually become conscious agents.They think they think but they don't. They don't actually feel the feelings they feel. She turns Chalmers's thought problem on its head by saying that ours already is the zombie world.

That would be largely correct, though I might disagree with some of the wording. People want to give consciousness this ontological status as 'a thing' that is more than just stuff happening in the brain. If consciousness exists in the brain as a property of classically behaving neurons, then at some level it is just 'stuff happening'. There is no conflict between consciousness and stuff happening because consciousness is just stuff happening. My model, if valid, explains how stuff happening takes on the appearance of consciousness as a thing. We feel that a Cartesian theater exists in our head because our brains are manipulating a model that is, essentially, the Cartesian theater. Just as our brain creates a model of the visual world that is filled with 3D objects, and no blind spot, Consciousness is a model that the brain constructs. You might ask "Who is the model constructed for?" It isn't constructed for anybody. It has inputs (sensory data and language) and outputs (images to sensory systems, language, body behavior), but it also has a set of 'created' parameters--these are what make up the structure of the Cartesian theater, it is imagined as a thing, unified, existing in the now, which 'owns' the body and the various outputs. I think the fact that this model includes control of the language center as well as input from the language center gives substance to the illusion that consciousness is a space where thoughts happen. This is a feedback loop, and there's one for visual images as well. I suspect that imagining things 'in our head' is using the visual centers in output mode. The images are constructed using what is normally thought of as an input only system. Rather than being input only, our sensory systems can be driven to create phantom images--an image of visual things, an image of a body which we 'own', and so on. It is these phantom images, constructed in a structured model that gives the illusion of consciousness. (Okay, my model needs a little work, but that's basically it.)

[Neo-Scholastic]

I think Jor is saying that they don't actually become conscious agents.They think they think but they don't. They don't actually feel the feelings they feel. She turns Chalmers's thought problem on its head by saying that ours already is the zombie world.

That would be largely correct, though I might disagree with some of the wording.  People want to give consciousness this ontological status as 'a thing' that is more than just stuff happening in the brain.

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 If consciousness exists in the brain as a property of classically behaving neurons, then at some level it is just 'stuff happening'.  There is no conflict between consciousness and stuff happening because consciousness is just stuff happening.  My model, if valid, explains how stuff happening takes on the appearance of consciousness as a thing.  We feel that a Cartesian theater exists in our head because our brains are manipulating a model that is, essentially, the Cartesian theater.  Just as our brain creates a model of the visual world that is filled with 3D objects, and no blind spot, Consciousness is a model that the brain constructs.  You might ask "Who is the model constructed for?"  It isn't constructed for anybody.  It has inputs (sensory data and language) and outputs (images to sensory systems, language, body behavior), but it also has a set of 'created' parameters--these are what make up the structure of the Cartesian theater, it is imagined as a thing, unified, existing in the now, which 'owns' the body and the various outputs.  I think the fact that this model includes control of the language center as well as input from the language center gives substance to the illusion that consciousness is a space where thoughts happen.  This is a feedback loop, and there's one for visual images as well.  I suspect that imagining things 'in our head' is using the visual centers in output mode.  The images are constructed using what is normally thought of as an input only system.  Rather than being input only, our sensory systems can be driven to create phantom images--an image of visual things, an image of a body which we 'own', and so on.  It is these phantom images, constructed in a structured model that gives the illusion of consciousness.  (Okay, my model needs a little work, but that's basically it.)

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Oddly enough I do not take issue with much of what you said since the term "consciousness" tends to cover a broad range of concepts. Your critique seems focuses on the notion of a unitary conscious agent, as opposed to say the contents of consciousness and deals with "consciousness" as a verb. One the one hand I am inclined to agree that the "Cartesian Theater" can be deconstructed into discrete parts. On the other hand, I question whether doing so ignores the essential, as expressed poetically:

Have you ever considered
After taking the person apart
That the broken pieces
Like spring-driven toys - in isolation tagged
Do
As they would do
In the company of their peers?

By focusing exclusively on the causal (efficient) relationships in material substances, I think eliminative materialists (which I consider you to be) avoid dealing with the ontological status of the contents of consciousness. By analogy, they think language is only about grammar and spelling and that the meaning of words and the intent of sentences are superfluous.

[bennyboy]

Are you sure that there's a difference? You'd need to be for that question to have any merit or value.  In any case, that you can't see it is hardly indicative, wouldn't you agree?  

I can't imagine how carbon fiber is produced, and yet it is.  You can't see how a collection of matter running algorithms could be conscious.......

Yeah, I'm sure.  One is a way of processing information, and the other is the subjective experience of what things are like. You can poke my brain. Maybe that will change my experiences. But you can't poke my experiences. To say, then, that the function, whatever it is, IS the experience, is not to accept what experiences really are.